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<title>“It’s Two Thousand Years Old, It's Essentially Public Property”. by KaiserJo</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27127631">“It’s Two Thousand Years Old, It's Essentially Public Property”.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaiserJo/pseuds/KaiserJo'>KaiserJo</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aggressive historians, Angst, Gen, Immortality Angst, Library Dueling, Necromancy, One Shot, Shitty philosophy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 06:28:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,757</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27127631</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaiserJo/pseuds/KaiserJo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on this Tumblr post: https://butterloverr.tumblr.com/post/621007571366674432/thinking-abt-immortality-and-how-meticulously.</p><p>Mercy is at her wit's end with the new lyctors, but Abigail Pent won't stop rifling through old letters for the sake of 'history'.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>84</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>“It’s Two Thousand Years Old, It's Essentially Public Property”.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mercymorn the First was preparing once again to annihilate a child. Well, not technically a child. Even she begrudged her that. </p><p>Of the new lyctors that her selfless and loving king had ordained to raise to the Mithraeum, the woman of the Fifth House was particularly aggrieving. Upon first meeting, whilst the other babies had shuffled their feet and looked on with quiet obsequience (the intended result of Mercy’s disciplinary tirade), Abigail Pent had seemed excited to see her. </p><p>Whilst being led down the corridors of the Erebos, Pent had peppered Mercy’s back with a fusillade of annoying and downright personal questions:</p><p>“—I’m sorry but this is a topic of much academic contention. The Eighth has held a near monopoly on the theocratic aspects of imperial rule for as long as its existed—if only they’d acknowledged the Fifth theologians at the Synod of Rhodes we could have settled this long ago, but you know men. So was the absolutist turn in the three-thousandth myriadic year your intervention too? There doesn’t seem to be much other explanation for Marcell Oktakiseron’s sudden policy reversal—“</p><p>Mercy was about to permanently fuse the new saint’s vocal cords and respond that the theology was all a bunch of rhetorical bullshit anyway before the kindly prince had condescended to join them. </p><p>Arrival at the Mithraeum had only intensified Mercy’s frustration. Pent had taken to combing the corridors with a pen and flimsy, pouring over the bones of one interred cohort commander or another, producing sheet after sheet of hastily scribbled notes. Mercy, who had long held the monopoly on self-organised precision amongst the remaining lyctors, took her entirely legible and clean handwriting very personally. </p><p>It wasn’t that Mercy was unaware of the human detritus that cluttered the halls of the space station. It was just that—like most things that involved the mortal human foundations of the empire—she found it impolite to acknowledge it. John and Gideon had somehow continued to build close personal relationships with souls that dancing like mayflies over a river; bound by their allotted years, unable to flower into anything Mercy considered worthy of attention. </p><p>Mercy had long acknowledged that her frustration with narrow-minded and short-lived humans had fermented into hate. Even when she had taken an active hand in the running of the empire they had gnawed at her, eating away at her twin souls with endless requests, needs, interests and mannerisms. The bureaucratic banality of it all had broken her twice over in the first thousand years alone. She could not die, but she would never be immortal. She cared too much for herself for that. </p><p>This was not to say Mercy was selfish—she had given her immortal soul to her God and King, and made his empire the purpose of her existence. The atoms of her being had been buried on far-off worlds, burnt on myriad battlefields, devoured by the swarms she had been appointed the shepherd. Of all this, Mercy had attempted to keep only one thing. A sense of self, of unity, of single, irreproducible Mercy-ness. She knew now that the self was the one thing a lyctor could not preserve for eternity. </p><p>She had watched her brothers and sisters shift and bend—crushed by the immense heat and pressure of ten thousand years. To become immortal you could not be satisfied with just one murder—you always had to kill yourself, too. Cytherea was often given to poetic indulgences, and had spoken to Mercy once of the beauty of a double suicide. She seemed to take solace in the idea that the woman who would take the life and soul of her only friend as so much charcoal had died a myriad ago, her body piloted by someone new and—Mercy was viciously cynical of poetry—linked only tangentially to the crime.</p><p>And now here were four newborn lyctors, one of which was insistent on revealing the specifics of how they had all murdered themselves. Pent would, with so much childish glee, brandish Mercy’s greatest personal failure for the enjoyment of all the people in the world who mattered.</p><p>So now Mercy rushed through the corridors of the Mithraeum like a tsunami, based on a tip off from Augustine that Pent had discovered some “Rather boring letters”, but that it would be “best to stop her before she attempts to draw academic conclusions.'</p><p>The library had been Cassiopeia’s project, of course. It had not expanded much in nearly two thousand years. Both Mercy and Augustine kept their books in their own chambers, and John’s paltry attempts to include more recent authors filled a measly two rooms. </p><p>Mercy began the conversation with a barrage of bone needles, multiplied from a splinter cracked from her index knuckle. Pent, apparently anticipating this, rose from her stool and in turn rose the stool like the shield. The blood ward, freshly daubed on the underside of the chair, reduced the projectiles to so much powder. Mercy continue her advance by drawing her rapier. This, she knew, would be more effective. Pent’s cavalier had been mediocre—worse than mediocre. She had spent days on end in the gym with Gideon to address this, but Mercy doubted that the saint of duty had the capacity to teach. </p><p>To compensate for her deficiencies, Pent had taken to stretching microscopically thin threads of nerve cells around the rooms she occupied. If she was expecting an attack, this at least gave her some forewarning of her enemy’s movements. Mercy reached out, trying to sense these threads around her, drying those she found to powder. Still, Pent reacted with preternatural speed, and she cursed to efficacy of the technique.</p><p>Mercy lunged forward, aiming directly for Pent’s eye socket, only for Pent to catch the blade with a swift parry. Mercy followed with Cristabel’s perfect cut down across Pent’s chest, cutting a scrap of brown overcoat to drift away like an autumn leaf. Pent retreated from this slice, escaping unharmed, save her coat. </p><p>“Most venerated saint, as much as I love our little talks, I would like to know why you’re trying to stab me."</p><p>Mercy followed Pent’s retreat, easily sweeping away her guard to drive the point of her rapier into the meat of her shoulder. Pent yelped in surprise more than pain, and twisted off the blade, the wound healing rapidly beneath punctured cloth.</p><p>“Stay the fuck away from my letters you entitled infant."</p><p>Pent was in full retreat now, unable to keep up with the speed of Mercy’s rapier. She parried two more vicious cuts, and in the process stumbled backward over a pile of stray books, crashing to the library floor. Mercy burst the skin of her forearm, drawing a fountain of blood that within seconds had extended and crystallised into a five foot spear on which she now prepared to impale her. </p><p>Before she would nail Pent to the floor, however, Mercy’s movements began to slow as though she were moving through honey. The microscopic threads that she had struggled to detect on her entry now began to grow and thicken, creating a webbing that was becoming increasingly difficult to move through. Mercy attempted to powder the webs, but Pent continued to pour in thanergy. The self-reproducing cascade had begun in earnest. Autonomous wells of thanergy placed around the library by Pent began to respond in support of their master, creating an exponential flood of power Mercy couldn’t hope to compete with. She hated using her rapier. She hated the way Cristabel made her forget about the obvious, filling her head with the blank and useless repertoire of stab slice slice. Mercy’s overconfidence had allowed Pent to capitalise on her necromancy to trap and ensnare her. Mercy screamed.</p><p>“I CAN’T FUCKING STAND YOU. WHY CAN’T YOU INFANTS KEEP OUT OF MY BUSINESS? NOW GIVE UP AND LET MY CRUCIFY YOU."</p><p>“Mercymorn, please, if this is about the letters—“</p><p>“OF COURSE ITS ABOUT THE FUCKING LETTERS. YOU HAVE NO RIGHT. YOU NEVER WILL. YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT ITS LIKE. TO HAVE TEN THOUSAND YEARS OF PAIN EXAMINED BY A FOETUS FOR HER SICK ENJOYMENT."</p><p>“These letters are a historic opportunity to shed light on early post-resurrection social forms. I have spent my whole life serving our Emperor in this way—“</p><p>“ YOU WOULDN’T KNOW A SERVICE TO YOUR EMPEROR IF ONE STABBED YOU IN THE SHOULDER AND PINNED YOU TO THE FLOOR OF A LIBRARY."</p><p>Pent sighed, straightened her glasses and began to stand. Mercy allowed her anger to subside slightly, from nuclear fusion reaction to devastating wild fire. </p><p>“I understood from the moment I found this library that it contained things you would not wish me to see. Even so, I have a duty to advance the knowledge of the Nine Houses. You must accept, Mercymorn, that your long life has been one of immense historical importance."</p><p>And, after a pause:</p><p>“Magnus wanted me to finish my book."</p><p>Mercy felt the nervous threads slacken around her, and with a slight push, let them fall like so much ash. She contemplated exploiting this moment of weakness to complete Pent’s crucifixion, but restrained herself on account of her single remaining grain of sympathy for Augustine. </p><p>“If I find you reading my letters again, I will string you up on the outside of this station and leave you to cook in a solar flare."</p><p>Pent didn’t seem to register this threat, turning back to her desk, and staring even further beyond.</p><p>“I thought one who had lived ten thousand years might understand."</p><p>The audacity of this half statement nearly provoked Mercy to invert her right there.</p><p>“Understand what?”</p><p>“Anything I was died with him. All I have left now is my work. I am a process of becoming, Mercy, becoming anything other than what I was.”</p><p>Mercy scoffed in indignation. </p><p>“I have no patience for poetry.”</p><p>Pent turned back to face her, and she saw the tears in her eyes.</p><p>“Let me read the letters, Mercy, let me work.”</p><p> </p><p>Later that evening Mercy unfolded one of the letters she had snatched from Pent as she beat a hasty retreat from the library. It was one she had written to Cassiopeia, near three thousand years ago. </p><p>"The night before she died Cristabel told me she would follow me into eternity, and now I carry her mortal soul in my chest, and she watches every shitty mistake and every awful thing I do. I used to want to be with her forever, and now, Lord I just want to be left alone."</p>
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